UC Berkeley

This study examines how a new humanitarian community emerged in the late 1960s

and why it came to act in the name of “humanity.” To realize the nature of this

transformation, the study focuses on Britain and its relationship to more global forms of

humanitarianism. In post-imperial Britain a new set of actors beyond the British state

came to adopt humanitarian ethics. In a series of case studies, the study examines how

humanitarianism mobilized a range of new historical actors who came to replace the

imperial state, beginning with non-governmental activists and former military experts and

expanding to include multinational corporations and ordinary people.

Initially, post-imperial aid relied on imperial infrastructure and knowledge. In the

1960s, organizations such as Oxfam used former Imperial experts to manage and

distribute global relief in places like Nigeria. Older imperial institutions like the British

military became major respondents to disasters in the Sahel and South Asia. But the postimperial landscape also included new, more business-minded actors. In the mid-1970,

multinational corporations and private businesses began developing their own solutions

to humanitarian suffering through agribusiness projects. Through charity shops, rock

concerts, and boycotts, ordinary people, consumers, and youth groups joined such

multinationals in acting for the cause of humanity. By the 1980s, humanitarian

organizations operated as a profitable business, generating substantial revenues that were

mobilized to care for, rescue, and intervene in response to natural and man-made

disasters such as famines, civil wars, and earthquakes.

Drawing on extensive archival work in Britain, the United States, and Switzerland,

this study shows that British humanitarianism was shaped by both the legacies of the end

of empire and the tensions brought by new forces of globalization in the 1970s. The end

of empires created the globalization of markets and goods as well as the rise of

nongovernmental and commercial actors. In a period of economic globalization and mass

consumption, I argue, a new humanitarian culture came to commodify aid. As such, I

argue, British humanitarianism became part of the new, increasingly market-driven,

political economy of the 1970s. In doing so, Britons were integrated into affective and

economic communities of aid, as well as the project of global governance.